meaning to carry it to the shore of Lake Champlain, and thence homeward
by water. Far through the woods gleamed the flames of Our Lady's Chapel,
flinging fantastic shadows from the clustered foliage, and glancing on
brooks that had never caught the sunlight. As the rangers traversed the
midnight forest, staggering under their heavy burden, the tongue of the
bell gave many a tremendous stroke,--clang, clang, clang!--a most
doleful sound, as if it were tolling for the slaughter of the priests and
the ruin of the chapel. Little dreamed Deacon Lawson and his townsmen
that it was their own funeral knell. A war-party of Indians had heard
the report, of musketry, and seen the blaze of the chapel, and now were
on the track of the rangers, summoned to vengeance by the bell's dismal
murmurs. In the midst of a deep swamp, they made a sudden onset on the
retreating foe. Good Deacon Lawson battled stoutly, but had his skull
cloven by a tomahawk, and sank into the depths of the morass, with the
ponderous bell above him. And, for many a year thereafter, our hero's
voice was heard no more on earth, neither at the hour of worship, nor at
festivals nor funerals.

And is he still buried in that unknown grave? Scarcely so, dear reader.
Hark! How plainly we hear him at this moment, the spokesman of Time,
proclaiming that it is nine o'clock at night! We may therefore safely
conclude that some happy chance has restored him to upper air.

But there lay the bell, for many silent years; and the wonder is, that be
did not lie silent there a century, or perhaps a dozen centuries, till
the world should have forgotten not only his voice, but the voices of the
whole brotherhood of bells. How would the first accent of his iron
tongue have startled his resurrectionists! But he was not fated to be a
subject of discussion among the antiquaries of far posterity. Near the
close of the Old French War, a party of New England axe-men, who preceded